Trying to, really, but I’m still not sure what your question is. It was stated in the original divorce decree that everything would be equal, and as you say, he failed to live up to his half of the deal, for six months. So obviously, he still owes the support he failed to give during those six months. And if the judge has determined he should be paying a specific amount every month, then it follows logically that he should have been paying that *same *specific amount in the months he missed as well.
I imagine the system is set up to allow that precisely because there are people who agree to do their fair/equal share and then don’t do it. While the guy didn’t know an exact dollar amount, he darn well knew it wasn’t zero. Chances are if he had lived up to making some reasonable and regular contribution they could have proceded indefinitely on that basis. He tried to scam the system and found out that that shit don’t flush. Now he’s got the court deciding what’s reasonable and holding him accountable for it.
Why on earth should it not be retroactive?
How would you suggest the matter be handled?
The guy skated by 6mnths of CS payments on excuses! In what world does the judge not know the guys being a douche?
Not all courts, are as forgiving as you seem to believe, of a man leaving a single Mom to support her child for months, then try and stand behind the date of a signature on a piece of paper, to weasel out of it.
I don’t know where you are, but round these parts, this outcome would be entirely predictable, 49 out of 50 times, I’d bet. And I don’t think I know anyone who would raise an eyebrow about it, upon hearing.
But this guy wasn’t paying at all. And he apparently did not contest that fact - that’s a critical point.
The agreement was for joint custody. That means his support should have been in the form of having the child one-half of the time and paying all expenses that come up during that time. An equal split between the two parents - each has one-half of the child-care duties and one-half of the expenses (theoretically).
He completely failed to provide ANY support. Not financial, not custody, nothing.
Yes, it would be unfair to double-charge him if he had actually been doing what he should, but he was not. Just like it would be unfair to say “hey, he gets to just ignore his debt for the last X months because we didn’t get around to this case until now”.
He is legally obligated to have provided support from the time his child was born. His obligation for one-half custody extends back to the time of the original divorce. The ex-wife filed to change the custody/support arrangements based on the fact that he was not fulfilling his obligation. He did not contest that fact, so essentially said “yes, since the divorce date, I have never done what I should to support my child”.
The judge simply took things at face value and awarded custody back to when the mom said “hey, need help here, deadbeat isn’t doing his share”. I strongly suspect that, if it had been requested and documentation provided, the back support could have been charged from the time of the original divorce.
Maybe I misread the OP. Where does it say he defaulted on CS payments? The OP is questioning the fact the CS was assessed retro actively, right?
If thats the case, then there was no order of CS in place for those 6 months, and he can’t be in default of an order that didn’t exist.
If there was no order in place, and if the guy didn’t walk into court and say “I’m a douchebag”, how did the judge know he was a douchebag?
He didn’t pay child support for 6mnths, that’s how.
6mnths that his child had to be fed and housed! A single mom, and the court, have had to chase him down, to do what he knows he’s supposed to, - support his child financially!
Douche.
FTR, I paid child support for 12 years, and dozens of other expenses every month on top of that, from school, supplies, to clothing, to food.
I have no tolerance for douchebags and little sympathy for guys who get caught by the system.
But be careful here…if you put in place this “no prisoners” policy you hammer a lot of guys who are more than doing the right thing.
The whole popular “dead beat dad” is a popular theme, and unfortunately rooted in a lot of truth, but it’s equally true that there’s a lot of moms who use that same system to hammer innocent fathers.
The dad breeched this agreement. He did not live up to his side. The mother provided 100% of the support instead of the 50% that she was supposed to have provided. She is entitled to recoup what she lost.
What’s so hard to understand here?
It’s not that he’s in default of an order. It’s that he should have been making a contribution, order or no. Since he failed to do so, the order now specifies what the contribution will be, and that he’s got to make up for what he should have been doing all along.
I agree he’s a douche!
But either there was an order of CS for that 6 months or there was not!
He can’t be in default of an order of CS that didn’t exist.
Is he a douche? Yes!
But 10 minutes after you retro actively assess him, a guy will walk into court who has been paying regularly up until this point. And if you use the same tool to retro actively assess him, you’re hammering a stand up guy.
More than likely, the reason the court went back to the original date of the divorce is that instead of filing a new motion for support, the court amended the dissolution. If he had been paying all along (whatever amount the parties had agreed to outside of the dissolution or an amount he felt was equitable) the court would have given him consideration for those payments.
As far as the convoluted calculations, most courts use income shares to figure out support - which is fairer to both parties (it used to be a set pecentage of the noncustodial parent’s income, period). If she feels it’s too much, she can bring it back into court and ask for a reduction or the parties can do a stipulation (at least, they can in many states).
I agree with you, and you get to the heart of the matter.
If he hasn’t been paying he should be assessed. But how does the court know this? If his wife’s word is all that’s needed, I can tell you there’s lots of embittered wives will lie right through their teeth to make him pay twice.
Should he provide records? How practical is it for you to prove you bought every pair of gym shoes?
IME, the courts are not going to wade through 6 moths of expenses to see if he’s a douchebag or stand up guy.
IME, the order starts now. On with the next case…
First of all, the state this occurred in may be important as they may have different rules as to when support needs to start - separation, filed or ruling. When I got divorced, I volunteered to pay $300/mo. It was increased to $503 effective upon the ruling pending dissolution but here is the strange part. In California it is based on your 3 months salary x 4 not your annual salary. What’s the difference? I get paid every 4 weeks and one of the preceding 3 months was the famous double pay month so according to the judge I made about 33% more than I actually did despite what my contract said and my tax return so support was like $800/mo. The judge refused to listen to reason during that hearing so 2 months later I filed for a reduction and this time with only 3 paychecks over 3 months it was reduced to the $503 figure.
Dad violated the orignal divorce/custody agreement with the mother. He didn’t fulfill his custody and support arrangement. She went to the court with her complaint. Normally in these types of cases the dad has the right to defend that “yes he dis fulfill his obligation”. But as stated by the OP he did not contest her allegations. The judge backdated the C/S support requirement to make the mother whole.
Nothing unusual or agregrious about this.
Divorce and custody issues create legal obligations, and it’s nobody’s fault but his own that he decided de facto gave up custody without researching or seeking legal advice on potential liabilities. Any lawyer off the street would have run the state formula and advised him that it’d be smart to put aside $569 a month from the day he decided to default on the obligations of his custody agreement. He’s only getting hit with the full six month amount because he made the choice not to save for it.
In fact, I bet he could have called the state agency in charge of this stuff and explained the situation, and they would have told him the same thing. But he didn’t do that, and I’m 99% sure that he didn’t research or plan for this because he was hoping to somehow get a free pass on defaulting on his obligations for six months. It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to do nothing at all and have the slate wiped clean when you get caught. Someone paid those expenses for those six months, and they don’t have to just swallow that cost because he managed to draw it out.
Again, this isn’t rocket science. When he chose to stop honoring his custody agreement, he was perfectly capable of figuring out and planning for the financial obligations that default would bring.
As for why they set an amount, rather than letting parents negotiate a lower amount? Well, at some point Junior might need braces or something that would require the full amount of the child support, and the custodial parent needs some way to access what is legally due to their child. It’s a lot easier for everyone to stick to the legal obligation and manage any extra as they wish (and it can be returned, or saved for college, etc.) rather than having to bring in the law and all the fighting again every time the situation changes.
The agreement that he signed stated that he agreed to split all expenses equally with his ex-wife. He didn’t do so. The may not have been a court mandated order of a specific amount of child support, but since he failed to live up to his end of the bargain there is one now. He doesn’t get to skate on missed support just because the specifics weren’t spelled out in detail.
Yes, there is an opportunity for abuse here. The ex may have documentation of valid expenses, or the court may use a formula. If the guy isn’t contesting that he didn’t pay anything then the only matter for the court is how much he owes for the time he wasn’t contributing.
I don’t want to seem like I’m defending this guy.
But I don’t see in the OP that “he agreed to split all expenses equally with his ex-wife.” Once again, IANAL, but in the cases of joint custody I’m aware of, there is a “residential” and “non-residential” parent and even with joint custody/ shared parenting there is a CS order. It is a formal, track-able amount paid through the CS bureaucracy.
So either that joint custody order had a CS order attached to it, or it did not. If it did not, I can’t see how the court could, or would, wade through their monthly expenses to see if he paid, or how much he paid.
It is precisely to avoid this quicksand that a CS order is attached with a specific amount that represent the minimum amount to care for the child.
Is there a moral obligation to pay? Yes But in the absence of a legal order to pay, it troubles me that he could be made to pay retro actively, for fear that while he is being treated fairly, it may trip up people who have already paid.
You touch on my concern and any father thats forward thinking.
Let’s say that you suspect that you’re going to be retroactively assessed, even if you can prove you’ve been supporting your child without a CS order. If you’re a decent guy, you have 2 options:
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Pay now, and pay again when you get assessed. In practice, pay twice.
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Recognize it would be "be smart to put aside $569 a month"so that when the CS order comes through that she’ll receive the back sum. In essence, you’re putting aside CS money into escrow until closing.
Thats not feeding Johnny now, but hopefully he won’t lose too much weight before the order comes through.
raindog, you seem to be missing the point that’s been made several times, so let me make it perfectly clear.
HE DID NOT CONTEST THE EX-WIFE’S STATEMENTS THAT HE HAD PROVIDED NO SUPPORT SINCE THE DIVORCE.
Let me repeat that for you, in case you didn’t catch it the first umpteen times.
HE DID NOT CONTEST THE EX-WIFE’S STATEMENTS THAT HE HAD PROVIDED NO SUPPORT SINCE THE DIVORCE.
Things would probably have gone differently if he had contested, depending on what documentation was available.
My BiL decided that he wasn’t going to contest anything in his divorce. Didn’t hire an attorney, didn’t show up for court.
You would not believe the custody and child support arrangements that got put on paper. Really. You wouldn’t. Of course, they didn’t resemble what actually happened IRL, either.
Real life example:
My ex-wife, perhaps the meanest woman in the Western Hemisphere, called me one day with an uncommon high fructose voice.
She needed $1200 dollars. We met at a restaurant where she was all flirty, and got the $1200. Later on, while I could prove the $1200, CS people told me than any money not paid through CS system was considered a gift.
The smarter approach would have been to loan her the money through the CS system creating a $1200 credit, and essentially pay myself back over a year by reducing my CS $100 per month.